30 – The Last General
When I interviewed Alejandro Nunez a couple of months ago after seeing The Last General in a YouTube ad I wasn’t expecting to be all that impressed. But his idea of mixing up massive-scale warfare with thousands of units with a war economy featuring towns, cities, and industrial areas to get resources is enough to at least get me excited. The game’s looking fantastic as well.
29 – Sanctuary: Shattered Sun
Al, from the Critical Moves Podcast, is partially responsible for the inclusion of Sanctuary: Shattered Sun in this list. The other reason is the fact that we don’t have enough games like Supreme Commander, and Sanctuary: Shattered Sun looks like the kind of title that might bring the formula to modernity. While it’s an old-school RTS at its core, the game’s shaking up its foundations- quite literally- by allowing you to destroy the map itself (the game’s set on Dyson Sphere), and by letting you control the weather as well.
28 – Earth of Oryn
Earth of Oryn is a visually stunning strategy game that has been in development for quite some time now. This indie city-builder will have players set out with nothing and build sprawling cities, bustling towns, and mighty castles. What sets it apart from the competition is its detailed Kingdom Builder system, which looks like it’s going to allow for a lot of customizability. It will let you decide which materials to use in each construction, and how large you want each building to be, it’s going to let you use geared systems to power buildings and things like elevators and moving bridges. Interestingly enough, the game’s going to feature an RTS layer that’ll let you fight against bandits and other hostile kingdoms.
27 – Dust Front RTS
Look, props for the SEO-friendly name of Dust Front RTS and the art style. This upcoming dieselpunk RTS with grand-strategy elements like a procedurally generated world and a non-linear campaign. You’ll be leading humanity as they fight against mutants, robots, and – of course- other less-loyal humans. Building a global economy to power the military might need to fight the enemy at such a large scale. The massive artillery cannons, the huge and clunky airplanes, and the sheer amount of enemies on screen make Dust Front RTS look very appealing to me.
26 – Age of Respair
It’s hard to look at Age of Respair and not immediately see Stronghold. It is what it is. Even its trailer says that you’ll be “building your castle” by setting up your economy with very similar-looking buildings to a stronghold (just look at the granary and stone masonry), “preparing for war” by building massive medieval armies with very similar looking units to the ones in Stronghold. Usually, I would say this isn’t a very good thing, but the people have been asking for a decent 3D Stronghold for years, so maybe it’s going to take Age of Respair to do it, instead of Firefly Studios.
25 – Ascent of Ashes
I heard about Ascent of Ashes during one of our Critical Moves Podcast recordings when Joe whipped this one out of nowhere. It’s a colony sim set in a post-apocalyptic setting. By the looks of its trailers, it’s very similar to something like Rimworld. You set up and build your base, take care of your colonists, arm them to the teeth, and fight off aliens, monsters, other humans, and the like. What Ascent of Ashes looks like it’s doing differently is its deeper take on tactical combat and dynamic AI. Oh, and the team building the game is the same one that created RimWorld’s Combat Extended mod, so it clearly takes its inspiration on its sleeves.
24 – D.O.R.F. Real-Time Strategy
Remember the first time you played Red Alert 2? How amazing its pixel art look? And remember when you came back to it 20 years later and how disappointed you were that things in the 90s are a bit too pixelated for our, more refined taste of this day and age? And how the controls weren’t at all that intuitive? I’m pretty sure the developers of D.O.R.F. felt the same, and that’s why they decided to recreate what I can only assume Red Alert 3 was supposed to be. Amazing artistic direction, fast-paced action, and ridiculous weaponry are just *chefs’ kisses*.
23 – General Staff: Black Powder
I’m not sure how many times General Staff: Black Powder is going to be on a “next year’s list”, because it keeps getting delayed over and over again, but I’ll keep it here just because of its potential. You see, Dr. Ezra Sidran is putting together an end-all-be-all solution for every wargamer looking to fight their battles during the age of muskets. With decades of experience in artificial intelligence research and plenty more as a wargame designer since the 1980s, Sidran has been quietly putting together the most advanced AI ever seen in a videogame.
22 – Dinolords
You know when you’re looking at a trailer of a game called Dinolords and the first line is “We didn’t think the Viking raids could get any worse” you know you’re in for a wild ride. Lo and behold, a fat Viking riding a T-Rex shows up 10 seconds later busting down a castle wall. Is this over the top? Yes. Is it stupid? Yes. Do I love it? Yes. Dino Lords is truly one of the ideas of all time.
21 – Two Point Museum
Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus are both beloved tycoon titles from Two Point Studios; these are games that manage to find the perfect balance between having a funny theme and a serious layer of management, and the players clearly love them. Now, the team is exploring an interesting new topic that I don’t think has ever been done in gaming: a museum! As your resident history lover, Two Point Museum is right up my alley!
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